Page 17

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know? Ernest Hemingway had hit the restful nail on the head. Sure, I had my nightmares of being trapped in a glass box, and I still had dreams of seeing creatures in a thousand weird and wonderful landscapes but, right now, nothing was as disturbing as reality. I’d tried to catch some Zs, if only to keep my promise to Genie, but after a brief attempt that resulted in hopeless twisting and turning, I’d given up and moved to the desk.

“Grendel. Male. About… twelve feet when standing on its hind legs.” I jotted down notes in my Purge diary so that they surrounded the rudimentary sketch of my latest Purge. I’d fill in the color and details later, but I wanted to draw the basic outlines now while they were fresh in my head. Victoria and I were both still hoping a pattern might emerge, of course, but there was a therapeutic aspect to it, as well. I liked keeping a record of everything I’d created. I’d filled it with page after page of comprehensive drawings—first, I made sure to draw the entire monster, then I zoomed in with etchings of important features, all painstakingly annotated so that I wouldn’t forget anything if I encountered the same monster again.

I flipped through one of the books Nathan had lent me and copied down the most vital characteristics that I couldn’t see just by looking at the Grendel. Or Gren, as I’d decided to call him. Not my most inventive name, but I was running on empty. “Venomous bite. Teeth that can puncture steel. A mace-like tail with poisoned barbs. Suspected Empath sensibilities that can be used to detect an enemy. Destroyer and devourer of humankind.” I paused. “That can’t be right; he didn’t eat anyone.” I puffed air through my teeth, letting my fingertips trail across the old, yellowing pages. “Some of these books really need a do-over… or I just got lucky with Gren.”

The empathic part lingered with me for a while as I jotted down some more supposed “facts.” Perhaps Gren had been channeling my emotions when he’d attacked my kidnapper. He hadn’t been able to understand what I was saying, but he’d gauged my panic and desperation and worked from that. Plus, back in the Repository, he’d gotten sad when I’d felt sad about his plight. Had he done the same thing then, feeling out my emotions and making sense of them? It wasn’t without issue as a way of communication, but it was a good starting point since I had no song for him, and no magic word that could break down the language barrier. I guessed I could’ve called Tobe or linked up to Leviathan for a trick or two, but the stubborn, eager-to-learn part of me wanted to try and figure Gren out on my own first. I felt as though I owed him that, without a cheat sheet.

Even if I won’t get to see him for much longer. After the trouble he’d caused during his capture, not to mention his sheer size and dangerous characteristics, I knew Victoria would want him out of her hair as soon as humanly possible. If only to add a decent boost to the Bestiary’s energy resources. To her, bigger was irrefutably better.

I returned to the task at hand, distracting myself from Gren’s fate. At least, if I could sketch him properly, I’d be able to remember him… and his heroic act that had potentially saved my life. Not much of a consolation, but it was all I had.

“Big eyes—tapered at the sides,” I wrote. “Not much of a nose, just two slits.” I wrote quickly, worried that his image would fade faster than I could draw. Sure, I could visit him again, but I liked to work from memory like I did when I had my monster dreams. I added some shading to the pupils and picked up my eraser to take away a speck of the gray, bringing a glint of light to his eyes.

I closed my eyes and tried to recall his face more clearly. But instead of his intelligent green eyes, a burning, red gaze stared back in my mind’s eye. I flinched, my body frozen with fear. Gripping my pencil so hard I worried it would snap, I felt my skin prickle, remembering the heat that’d seared off my kidnapper. The red mist, tumbling off him and swaying around his body like swathes of gauzy, scarlet cloth. And the way it had hit me, like it was hitting me now—as if everything bad that had ever happened to me had collided inside my brain at once, leaving nothing but terror and a sense of impending doom in its wake.

Is this how it feels to be a Fear Dearg? Does all that terror come from within you? I forced my eyes open and the overwhelming fear ebbed. I lurched forward onto the desk, panting as sweat trickled down the sides of my face. A few drops splashed onto my sketchbook, spreading some of the gray out of the defined lines.

Who would do that to a person?I realized that I didn’t mean the kidnapper—I meant the person who’d done that to him in the first place. The kidnapper had made it clear that he hadn’t always been that way, meaning it had to be some sort of curse or long-term hex. If it was a hex, then he’d have had something on him: an object, a hex bag, or a tattoo, something he might not even be aware of. If it was a curse, then the signs of it would be inside him somewhere: a marker in his blood, or in the minimal amount of Chaos that non-magicals possessed. Although getting an extraction of either kind from him would be like pulling the teeth out of a rabid, un-sedated wolf.

I took a few deep breaths and looked out my window at the rainy afternoon sky. Inky purples and grays and greenish blues added texture and mood to the usual creamy white of the clouds. Had he pissed someone off? Stolen magical artifacts from the wrong person? He’d pinched those Atomic Cuffs from someone, for sure, though maybe I was jumping to extremes. Kidnapping me seemed like last-resort territory, after he’d exhausted all other avenues. But undoing curses tended to go smoother if the victim went back to whoever had cast it. That wasn’t unique to djinn curses. Assuming it was a djinn curse, and that he didn’t know who the djinn was, then he was only at the beginning of a long journey of anguish and pain.

Not that I care if he suffers. I tried to convince myself that was true, only to recall the total despair in his voice when he’d told me it was hurting others, too. A curse didn’t care who it infected. What if it was hurting innocents? Killing them, even?

“I need answers,” I thought aloud. I’d gotten into the habit of doing that since coming to the Institute, to stave off the quiet of being alone. Yes, Victoria had told me to lay off the investigating and leave it to the pros, and I didn’t intend to defy her. I just wanted clarity. And there were two pros who could, at the very least, help me achieve that clarity. Plus, secretly, I wanted to see if Victoria hadlistened to my suggestions about who could be useful to her.

Taking out my phone and setting it atop a small pile of books, I dialed home.

Mom picked up after three rings, her face appearing in the video chat. “Persie!” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Wade, it’s Persie!”

Dad skidded into frame a few seconds later, grinning from ear to ear. “She lives!”

“Huh?” I frowned. Had they heard about my kidnapping? Common sense kicked in—there was no way they knew. If they had, they would’ve been at the Institute, and my dad definitely wouldn’t have been smiling like that.

“We thought you’d forgotten about your old ma and pa. You haven’t called in a week—we were starting to feel abandoned.” Dad scooched Mom over on her office sofa, instantly recognizable from the dark maroon leather. She gave him a playful shove, but stayed nestled into him as he put an arm around her shoulders. My parents would never understand that the video frame fit in a lot more than it had in their day. They could have sat at either end of the sofa, and I’d still have been able to see them both.

I laughed, hoping it sounded genuine. “Sorry about that. I’ve been training like crazy.”

“So we’ve heard. You must be exhausted. Have the bath salts been helping?” Mom smiled, but there was an odd tension in her mouth.

“Uh… a little bit,” I replied, flummoxed. “Who did you hear that from?”

Dad swept back his hair and put on a haughty expression. “That head huntswoman of yours. She’s quite a fierce woman, isn’t she? I felt like I was back at school when she called.”

“Are you forgetting who you’re married to?” Mom teased. But, again, it rang hollow.

Dad chuckled. “As if you’d let me.”

“Victoria called you?” I skimmed past their banter. As far as I was concerned, that was a huge victory for me. The head huntswoman had heeded my suggestion after all and gone straight to my parents. I wasn’t sure I liked her giving them the lowdown on my Institute exploits, but it seemed like I was safe regarding the kidnapping. “Did she want to talk about… witch hunters? Or something called the Veritas?” I lowered my voice, though I had no idea why. It wasn’t as though anyone outside of our trio was listening.

“Witch hunters?” Mom’s expression hardened into maternal seriousness. “No. She said there’d been a report of a member of staff going missing a while ago, and he had yet to resurface. She hoped we might be able to help, after you told her we might have some related information. She didn’t mention any Veritas, either.”

So… Victoria saved my butt. I was grateful to her for that. She easily could have told them everything, but that wouldn’t have done anyone any favors. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to lie to my parents, but they had enough to deal with between their missing magicals and a daughter who Purged monsters week in, week out. Besides, if they thought my mom’s surname had caused me to be captured by someone, they’d have lost their minds and dragged me back to the SDC, regardless of O’Halloran’s continued ban on my presence. Mom had been freaking out about that possibility for years. She’d surely have locked me up for my own safety, and not because of my ability. If she learned it had happened once, she’d live in constant fear of it happening again. I couldn’t put her through that.

“So, you don’t know anything about witch hunters or the Veritas?” I pressed, determined to get a concise answer from someone.

Mom shook her head. “I’ve never heard the term ‘witch hunters’ used in a modern context before. And Veritas doesn’t ring any bells. Why, is there something we should know?”

“It’s just a theory—they might be the people behind all the missing magicals.” I tried to avoid Mom’s prying gaze. “Do you think you’ll be able to help Victoria’s investigation?”

Dad nodded. “We’ve already promised to inform O’Halloran and the SDC Security Magicals. They’re going to check whether the scientist’s description matches any of the recently resurfaced victims.”

I nodded, saying nothing. It surprised me that my parents had never heard the terms “witch hunters” or “Veritas” before. There was a good chance that these people were keeping themselves under wraps, for obvious reasons, or maybe they went by a different name in the States. The guy who took me had said that “they” knew more about us magicals than we knew about “them.” So, there were plenty of possibilities as to why my parents had never heard of them before, but it was a little disappointing that I wouldn’t get the clear-cut answer I’d been hoping for.

“Go easy,” Dad warned suddenly, coaxing another confused expression out of me. Clearly, I was in trouble. A moment later, I found out why.

“You nearly revealed classified information, Persie.” Mom sighed. “I don’t know if you told Victoria more than she let on, and she was very careful not to throw you under the bus, but there’s a reason why our work is secret. I understand that you wanted to help in the case of this missing scientist, and this theory you mentioned, but they may not be related at all. That means you could’ve caused a breach. Obviously, I want to do everything I can if there’s some kind of danger near you, but there are rules and regulations in place. You should have come to me first, so I could have reached out to Victoria myself after checking with the necessary authorities that I had the green light to do so.”

I lowered my head, realizing that I’d been right not to tell them more. Their hands were clearly tied if they weren’t going beyond the SDC with this. After all, they’d only mentioned informing O’Halloran and the SDC’s Security Magicals. In the space of two phone calls—mine and Victoria’s—this had become a secret, secret mission. One they couldn’t even reveal to the wider US magical secret defenses without causing all kinds of legal upset.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do. These witch hunters are a potential threat, and what happened to the scientist seemed too coincidental not to be related to your missing magicals,” I explained, keeping my voice firm. “I only suggested that Victoria speak to you, in case you could share intel. I didn’t tell her anything that would breach any national secrecy acts, I swear. But… make sure you’re careful about who you involve, if you go ahead with this. And you should definitely contact Victoria again, or Charlotte Basani, if you want more information about these witch hunters. They’re the ones who know more. But maybe don’t use the term ‘Veritas,’ or they’ll know I said something.”

Mom’s gaze shifted to one of concern. “Are you okay, Persie? Is there more to this than you’re telling us?”

“I… met one—a witch hunter, and he had a serious axe to grind with us magicals,” I admitted. “That’s how I know they’re real, and that they’re a threat. But, before you both go off and start threatening to come and get me, I’m fine, and I’m safe, and I wasn’t hurt. I just heard some things from him that have got me worried.” It was the teensiest of white lies, told for their own sake. “That encounter has made this… personal. And I feel like Victoria and Charlotte aren’t telling me everything. I’d like to know why.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a dubious look before Dad replied, “Is that another reason why Victoria called us for help?”

“Yes.” I had to be as honest as I could. “But I asked her not to say anything about that encounter, so you wouldn’t freak out. If anything really bad had happened, I would tell you. But it was a random incident. I could’ve been any magical. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I knew that my parents would think almost-torture with a car battery classified as “really bad,” but I was fine, and there was no use stirring up that particular hornet’s nest. As long as they had some fuel to their fire, enough to get them going. Plus, I didn’t want my mom launching a tirade at Victoria for not telling her that her daughter had been kidnapped. It had been my choice, and it hadn’t seemed worth it, not when I’d come out unscathed.

Mom’s brows knitted together. “Well, that changes things.” She tilted her head from side to side, cricking her neck. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gotten on my high horse about security breaches. Hell, if it was because you were in some kind of trouble, you can toss every NDA out the window!”

“You can’t try and take over, though, Mom. This is Victoria’s turf and she won’t thank you for trying to muscle in. Or me, for that matter. Do some digging on these witch hunters, as well as the missing scientist—that’s all I’m asking. I just… have a feeling they’re tied together in some way.”

Dad nodded. “We can’t promise we’ll find anything, and we won’t step on anyone’s toes, but we do need to know that you’re okay. We get that you’re not at home anymore and you’re living your life out there, but we’re still your parents. We have to know our daughter is safe and healthy.”

“I am.” I smiled at him.

Mom leaned closer to the camera. “Your dad’s right. If you ever need your parents, understand that we’re here and ready to zap through a chalk-door at the drop of a hat. We’ll freeze hell if we have to. Please, Persie, let us know when things like this happen, even if you’re not physically hurt. Sure, the urge to come running will be overwhelming, and your dad will have to restrain me, but we’re not aliens—you can talk to us, and we’ll always respect your decisions in the end. We just want to know what’s going on.”

I smiled sadly. “I promise I’ll let you know in the future. But I’m really okay. I just want to know more about who these people might be.”

Even with an ocean between us, I could feel their love through the video screen. It couldn’t have been easy for them to hear things like this secondhand. I knew they’d talk about it for a good few hours after I hung up, but this felt like definite growth on both sides, especially since they hadn’t jumped up from the sofa and come barging through a chalk-door. I had to believe what they were saying, that they trusted me to handle things on my own. I was already proving that I knew how to reach out to them for help in a more mature way, and perhaps that showed them that I understood my own limitations. That I was an adult.

“Then… I think you might’ve just given us a lead.” Mom smiled, the tension in her face slackening. “We’ll be careful what we say and who we say it to, but this might be gold, Persie.”

Dad gave her a squeeze. “If you’re right about this link, I’ll slap a medal on you.”

I laughed. “Just don’t tell Victoria I told you about the witch hunters, and that’ll be enough for me.” I propped my chin on my hands and grinned at my parents. “Right, I have to go now. I won’t promise I’ll call more often, because I’m hopeless at remembering, but I’ll try my best to text more.”

“We’ll take that,” Mom replied. “And don’t worry, your secret is safe with us.”

“I love you so much.” I felt a weight slough away. My parents had some new information for their case, Victoria had listened to me, the kidnapping would stay on a need-to-know basis, and Victoria wouldn’t find out who’d told my parents about the witch hunters. As far as victories went, I was going to chalk this conversation up as one. My parents were the masters of stealth; if they’d promised to keep things on the down-low, I believed them.

Mom touched her fingers to her lips and pressed them to the camera. “We love you too, sweetheart.”

“And we miss you, so you’d better text.” Dad blew a kiss of his own, which I pretended to catch.

“Talk soon.” With that, I ended the call. Mom hated being the one to end it, and I didn’t want to get caught in an endless cycle of “goodbye, bye, bye, I love you, bye, yep, goodbye, I’m really going now… yep, bye, bye, bye.” Especially considering that my eyelids had gotten heavy all of a sudden, and my weary bones craved the snuggly embrace of my bed.

Leaving the phone where it was, I peeled myself off my desk chair and padded over to the bed. I collapsed in a heap, dragging the covers over me and pulling Thread Bear in for a hug—the one I wished I could give my parents. When I closed my eyes, sleep hit me like an 18-wheeler, melting away the real world and leaving behind a universe of dreams.

And there, still, in the center of that ensuing darkness… a pair of burning red eyes.